Two top Loudoun officials receive raises

Two county officials received a bump in their salaries in early January, with County Administrator Tim Hemstreet receiving a 3 percent pay hike and Commissioner of the Revenue Bob Wertz earning a one-time $8,500 increase.

With the raises, Mr. Hemstreet's salary comes in at $223,100 per year and Mr. Wertz will make $145,700 annually.

Mr. Hemstreet's raise is his first performance-based increase since coming to Loudoun County in December 2009.

Mr. Wertz has held his elected post since 1992. His office's responsibilities expanded recently when the county's assessment functions were moved within the revenue department.

-Trevor Baratko

Comments

What is the correlation between having a master’s degree and being an excellent teacher? The school system needs a better way to measure competence and success than having a master’s degree and continuing education credits. The pay schedule may benefit employees but does it benefit students?

These are 2012 numbers so in reality they really are higher now.
Despite the clamor about low teacher pay in America, the average teacher in a taxpayer-supported public school earns more in base salary alone — with summers off — than the median U.S. household earns in an entire year.

According to a new report from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average base salary for a full-time public school teacher in the 2011-2012 school year was $53,100.

The Census Bureau estimated that the median household income in the United States was $50,054 in 2011, the latest year for which figures are available.

Many public school teachers earn more than their base salary. For example, 41.8 percent of teachers receive additional income to work in extracurricular activities in the same school system; 4 percent earn additional compensation based on students’ performance; and 7.3 percent receive income from other school-system sources, such as state supplements.

On top of that, 16.5 percent of public school teachers have another job outside the school system.

When all sources of income are included, the average public school teacher earned $55,100 in the school year studied.

Teachers at public high schools earned even more: $57,700 in 2011-2012, and teachers at schools with at least 1,000 students made $59,100.

Footnote: The NCES figures for public school teachers do not include their often generous retirement pensions.

kind of funny how they show the lower amount given a flat 1 time amount($8500) and the higher amount a % raise. The $8500 raise was a 6.2% increase, which is great in this economy. And the 3% worked out to around $6500 for Tim, again kind of high for this economy. I would have cut both those in half and put towards teachers, fire and police.

Yeah, I bet their raises are coming from the millions saved by cutting the Employee retirement, VRS and heath care and benefits. How nice of them to take from the staff who actually serve the wonderful people in Loudoun.
Meanwhile, the average employee struggles to make ends meet.

Not sure why these two were singled out without due consideration and respect for our teachers. Maybe this is a good sign that long over due raises will be approved for our teachers as well.

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